Page 61 of Heartless Sinner

“I’ll deal with him if he tries anything. The debt paid frees Scarlett from him.”

He gives me a long stare, looking at me as if he’s trying to see into my mind. “Never seen you like this before. You must really want this girl.”

“She fascinates me.”

“Well, whatever makes you happy, but I’m sure your father will still push Eloise on you.”

“He will. That’s why I’m going to get married soon.”

“How soon are we talking?”

“Two weeks.”

His brows fly up again. “Fuck, you work fast, cousin.”

“Like you said, we have enough shit to deal with. I want to get the wedding out of the way so I can focus on resolving this thing with the Nexxus. It’s already taken up too much time.”

“I couldn’t agree more. I may have a lead on that, though. Two, to be precise.”

My pulse quickens, and I straighten. “What did you find out?”

He pushes back from the desk, cracking his knuckles. "Lead number one.”

He reaches for the laptop and pulls it closer so I can see the screen when he turns it on.

A few taps on the keyboard and the blurred image of a man appears fleeing from the factory where Scarlett met the guys from the Nexxus.

Brahm clicks a few more keys and pulls up an FBI mugshot of the same guy. “I found that Estes guy. His full name is Estes Pokapieva. He’s ex special forces.” He points to the out-of-focus image. “The surveillance at the factory was shitty, but I managed to get that footage, then my facial rec bots did the rest.”

“Damn, Brahm. This is a big lead. We can do a lot with a name.”

“Yeah, but this is unfortunately where my luck runs out on details for him. He served a prison sentence then supposedly went to work on an oil rig. There’s nothing more on him. No address, no family details, nothing.”

“All signs of a person working in secret.”

“Exactly. I think we’ll have quicker results by focusing on lead number two.” He sounds proud of himself. He should be.

“What’s lead number two?”

“Remember that tracker I put in when we first got hacked?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve kept using it. Weeks ago, the hackers threw me off by routing their attack through seventeen different ghost proxies so I couldn’t track them, but they fucked up.”

“What happened?”

A cold smile spreads across his face. “Last night, I discovered they used a new proxy for an email sent from a phone. And the encryption signature matched the one at your father’s house.”

“Someone contacted them from my father’s house?”

“Yes. After his business meeting. The bad news is the phone they used must have been a burner because it’s coming up dead. I can’t link it to anyone.”

“Something must have happened last night to make them slip up and use that phone.”

“I think so. But it looks like our search is going to take us right back to New York.”

“At least we know for certain that it’s someone we know. It would only be someone we know if they were at my father’s house for that meeting.”

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